


Something Else

by potoyto



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Pretentious ramblings disguised as a ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 11:29:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16618127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potoyto/pseuds/potoyto
Summary: just a short drabble





	Something Else

Laughter filled the walls of the library, mixing in the air with the amber light of the old light fixtures and coalescing into what Xander perceived as the setting for one of those cheesy Hallmark cards. Xander knew the kind, the ones you buy in bulk with the premise of sending them out to all your relatives in the hopes of finally living up to the unspoken promise that you’ll finally become one of those people that mails out cards on the holidays. But they always just end up residing in some forgotten box in the attic or some unused room until you finally throw them out after they gather enough dust and weathering and stains you can’t feign to think of how they came to be, and they’re just unsalvageable and you just can’t justify keeping them around anymore.

 

Because they don’t belong to you.

 

And you never did.

 

Xander’s eyes lingered over the scene, taking it in like the nostalgic photograph it should have been, the joy-lit faces that were worse than strangers to him now. None of them looked his way, and he wondered if they meant not to. A glance, a look would seem so natural, and yet, it was as if they knew he was standing there, watching them through the glass in the door like an unbidden voyeur, like they had made a pact amongst themselves deigning not to break the illusion. Like he was a peasant looking in on the aristocracy, and they felt acknowledging him was beneath them. If they even gave him that much consideration.

 

There was only one who didn’t belong to the scene like He was plucked from a separate time and place and superimposed into the room. And an imposing figure He was.

 

His eyes met Xander’s, and Xander felt his stomach turn at the intrusion. There was too much familiarity in those eyes. Too much safety, and too much regret. Like a home you never felt safe in, like an asylum where the enemy is your keeper.

 

Like a prison where your warden is the one who sets you free without ever breaking those damn chains and they weigh you down as you fly towards the sun before you plummet back to earth and cry yourself to sleep in their arms.

 

He drops His hands to her shoulder, turning her to Him gently and He’s kissing her now, twisting the knife in his throat and wrenching a silent cry from his heart, and His eyes are on hers now but somehow, they’ve never left him and he just wishes he can tear the damn eyes from his skull, and it occurs to him that he isn’t sure whose eyes he wants to tear out any more. Because He’s not an angel anymore, He’s sunken beyond the role of Devil and transcended God into something that shouldn’t exist and it frays the edges of his mind that it’s not him He’s kissing right now, and He knows it as He blesses her with sin in the garden where he cannot tread.

 

Their laughter grows taunting, mocking. 

 

His eyes move back to the window, but all he sees is a reflection of everyone but Himself, though He is all he can see.

 

He cries as He laughs along with them. 


End file.
